Apple's high-performance desktop Mac Pro will get its long overdue specifications overhaul this spring. The Mac Pro is being pulled off shelves in Europe due to lack of compliance with local regulations; but a French retailer believes the pull out is temporary, and that a new, rehashed Mac Pro will be reintroduced in Spring (March-April). The new Mac Pro pole-vaults Sandy Bridge-EP Xeon processor line to Intel's next-generation Xeon "Ivy Bridge-EP" dual-socket processors, SSDs being standard equipment, and the latest generation NVIDIA GeForce or AMD Radeon graphics cards. It's also quite likely that Apple to refresh its display lineup to support higher resolutions.

Yes, but you don't need to go with a vendor to legally obtain a tower if you go with a PC with Windows. In that case you can build it and not give HP or Dell (who has just been bought by Microsoft,) where you do with Apple. Granted skt2011 Xeons aren't cheap either.

Unless you get the Xeon E5-2620 though. Might only be 2Ghz (2.5Ghz turbo), but it's 6-core with hyper-threading with a 95-watt TDP for ~400 USD.

Yes, but you don't need to go with a vendor to legally obtain a tower if you go with a PC with Windows. In that case you can build it and not give HP or Dell (who has just been bought by Microsoft,) where you do with Apple. Granted skt2011 Xeons aren't cheap either.

Unless you get the Xeon E5-2620 though. Might only be 2Ghz (2.5Ghz turbo), but it's 6-core with hyper-threading with a 95-watt TDP for ~400 USD.

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Always cheaper when you can build it yourself, providing for 200 is a bit harder.

I don't think there are that many companies that would be considering buying 200 Mac Pros. Maybe laptops and Mac Minis, but the price tag on the Pro is simply way too high to buy in that kind of volume if your watching your budget. Doesn't sound like a wise business purchase. I doubt every employee needs that kind of power either.

Huh? I'm looking at prices now. I can either get a MacPro with a 3.2ghz, 8 mb cache, 1st gen i7, 6 gig RAM, and a HD5770 for $2500 or a Dell Alienware X51 with a 3770, 8gigs of RAM, and a GTX 660 for $1150. The premium is rediculous.

I don't think there are that many companies that would be considering buying 200 Mac Pros. Maybe laptops and Mac Minis, but the price tag on the Pro is simply way too high to buy in that kind of volume if your watching your budget. Doesn't sound like a wise business purchase. I doubt every employee needs that kind of power either.

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Even if its 30 you will be dedicating quite a lot of space, time and effort which can probably be better spent elsewhere.

Even if its 30 you will be dedicating quite a lot of space, time and effort which can probably be better spent elsewhere.

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You gotta look from a corporation's perspective. Hardware is cheaper than salary. Apple's propriety standards are closed and therefore less problems with compatibility. Where I work, you can choose to have apple or pc from any major manufacturer. IT support is rarely called for apple mac pros while there's constant problems with PCs equivalent. Yes! PC equivalent probably cost 40% less but an average IT support tech around here is over $80k/year.

In the end, mac pros are limited to what they can do but PCs are not. So if they have everything they need with the mac, the overall cost is actually much less.

Apart from the fact that this will be priced for 3-5x the price for an equivalent non-Apple product, who actually wants to buy Mac OS for high-end equipment? I mean... from my personal experience I've seen Autodesk products becoming slowly compatible with macs but half the options are missing due to poor software support from apple. Does photo-editing (or other) programs fully work and perform at least as fast on a Mac as on a Windows PC with equivalent specs (taking out the price factor).

No, I'm comparing what is available from Apple and what is available from Dell.

BTW, that 3770 outperforms that Xeon, ECC memory or not.

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You are comparing a gaming platform to a workstation. If you want to compare realistically, add premium support (on site), two high end CPU's, at least 32GB RAM, some high end GPU's (Quadro/Firepro) and start look at general build quality and watch the premium shrink.

Apart from the fact that this will be priced for 3-5x the price for an equivalent non-Apple product, who actually wants to buy Mac OS for high-end equipment? I mean... from my personal experience I've seen Autodesk products becoming slowly compatible with macs but half the options are missing due to poor software support from apple. Does photo-editing (or other) programs fully work and perform at least as fast on a Mac as on a Windows PC with equivalent specs (taking out the price factor).

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Overexaggeration! I fully agree Macs are overpriced but it is not 3-5x overpriced!!!!!!

too much fanboyism and ignorance. Macs are not good at everything but they do have decent software for media work like Final Cut Pro. It's actually widely used by professionals in the industry.

Come on guys, let's be subjective here.

Macs are 30-50% overpriced for the same spec. The thing saving them is their simplicity, aesthetic design, build quality and marketing.

For an enthusiast and someone who knows their ways around a computer, you can save massive $$$ by building your own pc and troubleshoot problems yourself. What you think is just minor problems(eg. hardware compatibility, software updates, etc...) are major problems to most people who don't care/know much about those things. They just want their computer to work so they can use it without headaches.
The existence of geeksquad and similar services should tell you that.

You are comparing a gaming platform to a workstation. If you want to compare realistically, add premium support (on site), two high end CPU's, at least 32GB RAM, some high end GPU's (Quadro/Firepro) and start look at general build quality and watch the premium shrink.

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I will do that later for you.... but ecc ram is dirt cheap.
The base is overpriced... the margins do get slightly more narrow in comparison with the other vendors... but the gap between what you can build vs them... does not.

Right now its cheaper to get a dual cpu SB-E HP red workstation over a decked out Mac Pro... and the HP would run circles around it in every aspect.

As for building stuff yourself.... I have built a 4p g34 rig for < 2k ...

I will do that later for you.... but ecc ram is dirt cheap.
The base is overpriced... the margins do get slightly more narrow in comparison with the other vendors... but the gap between what you can build vs them... does not.

Right now its cheaper to get a dual cpu SB-E HP red workstation over a decked out Mac Pro... and the HP would run circles around it in every aspect.

As for building stuff yourself.... I have built a 4p g34 rig for < 2k ...

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Of course it'll be cheaper to build yourself, but it's not always people have the time for it. And workstations often have to work, so you should also take a close look at how breakdown would be handled where you live, hence the premium support. Sometimes Apple Care might be a better option than HP or Dell. And if you build it yourself with parts from Newegg, can you afford to loose the time it would take to RMA the motherboard, or any other critical component?

But all is moot anyway if they don't update the Mac Pro soon. It really is pretty outdated, so now it's the worse option no matter how you look at it. IMO.